The AIPAC Case in Washington, Iraq, and Beyond
The New York Times story today on the dropping of the government case against the AIPAC lobbyists Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman comes in separate parts, not entirely signaled by paragraph breaks or outward format. The report by Neil A. Lewis and David Johnston sets out to answer three questions. What was this investigation about? Who is pleased and who displeased by the reversal? And why was the case dropped at just this moment?
The last question is the easiest to answer. The Justice Department announced that the charges would be dropped two days before the opening of the 2009 AIPAC Convention. One may have noticed earlier that the Obama administration and the government of Israel play each other on a tight clock. Israel withdrew from its devastating assault on Gaza only hours before the inauguration of Barack Obama. The administration has let off the AIPAC lobbyists in time to be considered a sentimental encourager and not a spoiler of the mutual uplift that marks the annual AIPAC gathering.
About the contest within the Justice Department over the pursuit of the case, the Times reporters Lewis and Johnston finesse every point of actual information with aggregate nouns, omitted definite articles, and many unnamed sources. We are told that "F.B.I agents poured substantial resources into the case, and the decision to seek a dismissal infuriated many within the law enforcement agency." The FBI is itself part of the Justice Department, and its agents are likely to have been conversant, if anyone was, with the sort of evidence needed for a conviction, even under the difficult burden of proof required in this case by Judge T.S. Ellis III. We are told that Joseph Persichini, Jr., head of the bureau's DC office, was also disappointed by the decision to drop the charges. Whom does that leave satisfied? The final decision was made, say Lewis and Johnson, "solely by career prosecutors in Alexandria." So the Obama administration acted in obedience to the wish of "prosecutors," but it is left unclear whether this was the wish of all the prosecutors.
Nor were they the only persons present at the discussions. "While senior political appointees at the Justice Department did not direct subordinates to drop the case, they were heavily involved in the deliberations." Heavily involved. "David S. Kris," unnamed sources told the Times, "the newly appointed chief of the department's national security division, and Dana J. Boente, the interim United States attorney in Alexandria, had conferred regularly with prosecutors and ultimately decided to accept the recommendation to abandon the case. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was informed and raised no objections." A curious sequence of facts. Holder raised no objections to a decision which was arrived at by prosecutors with the help of two men -- a fresh appointee and an interim U.S. attorney -- whom he himself had sent into the discussion for some purpose. Let us assume he was not displeased with a result that his own men had sought, even against the wishes of the relevant office chief at the FBI.
Whether or not it was the right decision, it was a clearly in part a political decision. But what was this case about? Here is how the New York Times lets AIPAC immaterialize:
While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman trafficked in facts, ideas and rumor, they had done so with the full awareness of officials in the United States and Israel, who found they often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making between two close, but sometimes quarrelsome, friends.
The above words should be ascribed to the paper and not the reporters -- they are cast in the idiom and carry the momentum of an editorial. Smoother words were surely never uttered about spying; but under every phrase is a hidden premise.
"Facts, ideas, and rumor": let us break it down. Were the facts true? And if true were they state secrets? Were the rumors true? If so, they, also, were facts. If the rumors were untrue, to be of value they must have been accurate reports of an intent to make use of a falsehood. Both sorts of acquisition, of course, have always been greatly interesting to foreign states.
"Ideas": bright ideas? speculations? These would only be important if traced to a source. But to know who puts forward which ideas is to possess inside knowledge of no small value.
"With the full awareness of officials in the United States": which officials in the Unites States? Not, apparently, Joseph Persichini. And not, one would guess, the director of the FBI Robert Mueller III, either. Was Representative Jane Harman one of the officials who approved of the passing of facts with full awareness? Was Douglas Feith?
"And in Israel": which officials in Israel? Was any member of the lately formed government of Israel, with which the Obama administration now must deal, a party to the passing of classified data? For example: Binyamin Netanyahu's national security appointee Uzi Arad, a former Mossad agent who, according to the Washington Post, was for many years denied U.S. security clearance "because of a meeting he had with a Pentagon employee involved in leaking information." If he was among the "officials in Israel" who approved the commerce between Lawrence Franklin, Steven Rosen, and Keith Weissman, that would be useful to know.
"They often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making": lubricate -- delicate word. But the wheels were oiled by grease that had to be smuggled in; and somebody must have been slowing down those wheels for the lubricant to have become necessary. Decisions, the Times doubtless means to say, were tipped one way, but this was exactly the way that those in charge of both countries would have wanted to see them tip. Meanwhile the confidence of those who gave advice to the contrary was being breached; which is to say, the outcome of the discussion was prejudiced.
Like most stories of spying, this one has a prehistory. And like many stories about Israel and the neoconservatives, the prehistory of the case against Rosen and Weissman lies somewhere in the run-up to the war in Iraq and its immediate aftermath.
For the precursor of the FBI investigation of Rosen and Weissman was the FBI investigation of Ahmed Chalabi in 2004. There, too, very substantial accusations seemed on the point of being leveled against a prize asset of the neoconservative forces in the White House; there, too, the accusations were dropped for reasons obscure to the public.
Lawrence Franklin, who was sentenced to twelve years in federal prison for passing information to Rosen and Weissman -- information the Times says both governments knew and approved of having passed -- was also a target of that earlier FBI probe. According to a Washington Post story by Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks on September 3, 2004, the FBI closely scrutinized both Franklin and Douglas Feith in that U.S./Israel/Iraq inquiry; for, as Wright and Ricks noticed in an unsettling paragraph, the 2004 investigation had extended far beyond Chalabi:
The FBI probe is actually much broader, according to senior U.S. officials, and has been underway for at least two years. Several sources familiar with the case say the probe now extends to other Pentagon personnel who have a particular interest in assisting both Israel and Chalabi, the former Iraqi dissident who was long a Pentagon favorite but who has fallen out of favor with the U.S. government.
The earlier FBI probe of the Israel Lobby, then, was aimed at the convergence of Chalabi -- the most effective outside promoter of the Iraq war -- and a huddle of persons "who have a particular interest in assisting Israel." But the probe also branched out, in a second direction, to cover links between some particularly pro-Israel officials in the U.S. government and "a pro-Israel lobbying group." This sounds as if it might have been AIPAC.
Wright and Ricks, in their Washington Post story of September 2004, continued:
There appear to be at least two common threads in the multi-faceted investigation. First, the FBI is investigating whether the same people passed highly classified information to two disparate allies -- Chalabi and a pro-Israel lobbying group. Second, at least some of the intelligence in both instances included sensitive information about Iran.The broader investigation is also looking into the movement of classified materials on U.S. intentions in Iraq and on the Arab-Israeli peace process, sources added.
U.S. officials said the alleged transfer of classified intelligence to Chalabi has been part of the FBI investigation at least since a raid in May by Iraqi officials on the Baghdad compound of Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress. Classified U.S. intelligence material was found in that raid, a senior official said.
Thus, two main features of the 2004 investigation were: (a) it touched on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and (b) it related to the occupation of Iraq -- the likely future (it may be guessed) as well as the recent past of that occupation.
The previous FBI investigation also brought to light sensitive information about Iran. Remember that Ahmed Chalabi, "a Shiite but our Shiite," was at that time accused of leaking information to Iran. And recall that this accusation somehow tactfully disappeared without ever being answered or dispelled. An unnamed source in the Wright-Ricks article, close to U.S. intelligence, said that the investigation was only an outward sign of a deeper conflict between CIA regulars and the overseers brought in by the Office of the Vice President to fix the facts around the new policies.
The new people won out -- with what results in Iraq we know. They also appear to have succeeded in quelling the investigation of Chalabi. It is true that Chalabi's extraordinarily poor showing in the Iraqi election of December 2005 -- he received too few votes to earn a seat in the national assembly -- called the neoconservative bluff regarding the cordial welcome democracy would offer to the people we were backing in Iraq. Yet a position was found for Chalabi: he was made Oil Minister of the new Iraq; placed in control of the one national asset the U.S. guarded with care, while the library of Baghdad was pillaged and the museum looted. Such things may happen by accident, but two, or three, or several of them cannot be strung together so as to form a convincing pattern by accident.
Through the recent tergiversations of policy and prosecution, including the conduct of the U.S. government against "enemy combatants," the FBI has played a relatively honorable part. To judge by the evidence of internal disputation that has made its way into public view, the bureau moved on at least three occasions to prevent U.S. policy from being corrupted by secret influence and by a twisting of international law. In all three cases, the FBI was overridden -- in the first instance, the dispute over torture, by lawyers for President George W. Bush; in the second, over Chalabi, by the people around Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld; and in the third, to infer the what is all but clinched in the Times today, by U.S. attorneys coming late to a difficult case and putting their hand in the scale to achieve a result that President Obama wanted.
These perplexities are bound to continue until we change the situation that fosters them. For the recurrence of plausible accusations against AIPAC, the difficulty of both bringing and completing a case against its lobbyists, and the bad faith of the reasons that must be used to pretend that the cases are frivolous or the evidence negligible, all throw us back upon the question, Do we really want the U.S. to have a "special relationship to Israel" -- with all the benefits and allowances this brings to adepts of channeling like Rosen and Weissman, and the sub rosa understanding that the American people have consented to the arrangement? In that case, every friend of Israel is a friend of the U.S., and there is no such thing as spying for Israel. An Israeli agent caught passing state secrets becomes an American agent by definition.
How close is Israel to the United States -- in politics, national interest, practice of equality, and other relevant traits? How close do the people of either country wish us to be? AIPAC is based, of course, on an ideology of total identification. It would be absurd to claim that someone could spy on America for California or New York. Someone who seems to be doing that must be trying "to lubricate the wheels of decision-making" between the federal and state governments that are "close but sometimes quarrelsome friends." The New York Times supposes the idea of information passed from the U.S. to Israel without both sides wanting it passed is likewise simply absurd. The true doctrine is, they know we know they know. With the exception of the agents at the FBI, and maybe a few U.S. attorneys, everybody understands. But do we?
The suppressed alternative is that we treat Israel as an ally with whom we sympathize, but with whom on occasion we have differences which we are not afraid to show. Can Israel become again, what it once preferred to be, an ally of the United States in the same sense in which France or Australia is an ally? Or will it press, like AIPAC, for total identification of interest and cause? Our friends are your friends, our enemies are your enemies, our weapons are your weapons. And our self-destruction? It is time to slow down and look hard.
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Franklin gets 12 years these guy get off free! WOW...I thought these things only happened in the third world countries.
"I thought these things only happened in the third world countires." Perhpas you should take this as a warning that perhaps we are in process of changing to a third world country?
It's either good for the US citizen or not good for the US citizen.
Representatives either represent the US citizen or they do not represent the US citizen.
It's your country, make your voice heard.
All PAC's should be made illegal, and shorter term limits for so-called representatives.
"The Lobby" wins another one. The American people lose another one.
The regressives have predictably, utilized AIPAC as a platform to regroup GOP power by attacking
Obama's foreign policy.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/newt_at_aipac.asp
What a perfect indication of who's itinerary AIPAC is in collusion with.
It is not really an attack. It is used as "horse" in this political chess game!
That's pretty vital information, thanks for the link
When you have so many "Israeli" and Aipac partisans (supporters) in government or members of government with dual citizenship and when the press is owned by those who fund, advance and shield Aipac then you are more easily able to blur the red lines that shouldn't be crossed (i.e. spying and manipulating or changing policy to benefit of a foreign country).
Aipac has not yet reached the point where those lines have been completely blurred so that it can rise above all suspicion, however, it has managed to bypass intense scrutiny and push its agenda because of the "tentacles" that reach out into government, the media, justice and powerful corporate institutions. This multifaceted network or "tentacles" work together, albeit tacitly, to achieve the objective of protecting and helping achieve the goal of this Lobby which is to make their objectives the common objective of Americans and their government with little to no resistance whatsoever. Having these spying charges dropped shows us how far they have come.
To be continued....
.../2
When you consider that 2.5% of Americans might have a vested interest in Aipac’s objective which could be translated as giving Israel the power of an "adopted" State and even greater, and that not all of that 2.5% agree with this objective since a percentage see Israel as being completely misguided, then you see not only the danger in this but how unfair it is to impose it on the remaining 97.5% of Americans who have an "electoral" process that they count on to set policy and legislation in their best interests!
If Aipac is allowed to continue functioning in this way to subvert American Democracy then why not include Israelis in our elections as part of the overseas electorate since important decisions are being made in their name, on their behalf and in their best interests and American resources and lives are being spent and wasted to further that end!
It's not to late stop stop this, however, when you drop an important case against two of Aipac’s members, allow this Lobby unfettered access to government and refuse to investigate them or restrict their operations then you are enabling and inviting the inevitable outcome which I already described which is bestowing Israel with unprecedented power and blurring the lines that define it as a “foreign” interest completely.
You missed to mention that the guy who is at the center of this issue was able to pull strings and force Charles Freeman to step aside not too long ago!
Better yet, have Americans vote on Aid to Israel, using electronic voting machines.
That way, the vote could be rigged and the media could tell Americans they are all pro-Israel. Problem solved, and the diaspora wouldn't have to work so hard to get dollars for Israel.
You raise some very good points, as usual, skia. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
I do not know why this would be a surprise. After all, in this country people do NOT choose who would run and get to be elected for the Congress and the Senate, AIPAC & Associates do!
When you have so many "Israeli" and Aipac partisans (supporters) in government or members of government with dual citizenship and when the press is owned by those who fund, advance and shield Aipac then you are more easily able to blur the red lines that shouldn't be crossed (i.e. spying and manipulating or changing policy to benefit of a foreign country).
Aipac has not yet reached the point where those lines have been completely blurred so that it can rise above all suspicion, however, it has managed to bypass intense scrutiny and push its agenda because of the "tentacles" that reach out into government, the media, justice and the powerful corporate institutions. This multifaceted network or "tentacles" work together albeit tacitly to achieve the objective of protecting and helping achieve the goal of this Lobby which is to make their objectives the common objective of Americans and their government with little to no resistance whatsoever. Having these spying charges dropped shows us how far they have come.
To be continued....
Sorry about these reposts!
When you have so many "Israeli" and Aipac partisans (supporters) in government or members of government with dual citizenship and when the press is owned by those who fund, advance and shield Aipac then you are more easily able to blur the red lines that shouldn't be crossed (i.e. spying and manipulating or changing policy to benefit of a foreign country).
Aipac has not yet reached the point where those lines have been completely blurred so that it can rise above all suspicion, however, it has managed to bypass intense scrutiny and push its agenda because of the "tentacles" that reach out into government, the media, justice and the powerful corporate institutions. This multifaceted network or "tentacles" work together albeit tacitly to achieve the objective of protecting and helping achieve the goal of this Lobby which is to make their objectives the common objective of Americans and the American public with little to no resistance whatsoever. Having these spying charges dropped shows us how far they have come.
Please read the post above...this repost is incomplete. Part 2 should be attached to the post above that mentions "continued".
Wonderful analysis by David Bromwich.
Everyone got a pass, it's quite ridiculous. And to hear Jane Harman rant about wiretapping now is a wonderful example of hypocrisy at its finest. Jane was for it until she was caught in it. Addressing AIPAC no less.
The United States needs to take a strong look at our "special relationship" with Israel. It needs to take the reins back and truly re-evaluate what is in our best interests. The greatest threat to Israel is Israel.
A threat they are milking for all its worth.
Bromwich's analytical separation of the NYT text into two streams of authorial presence, one individual, one corporate, but designed to be digested as if of single authorship:
"The above words should be ascribed to the paper and not the reporters -- they are cast in the idiom and carry the momentum of an editorial. Smoother words were surely never uttered about spying; but under every phrase is a hidden premise."
is brilliantly insightful. It's his subtlety of analysis which provokes the text itself to reveal levels of concealed meaning; it is what separates him from every other blogger on this site. That there are minds like his out there gives one a slender reason to hope.
I agree completely and just imagine if he had not brought into focus these subtleties? The matter of this case being dropped would have proceeded practically unquestioned and unnoticed and would not provoke the necessary discussion that is needed to prevent the "lines" from blurring altogether by putting such discussion into action and perhaps informing members of Congress that this "dangerous liaison" must be subject to scrutiny and discipline once and for all.
I agree completely and just imagine if he had not brought into focus these subtleties? The matter of this case being dropped would have proceeded practically unquestioned and unnoticed and would not provoke the necessary discussion that is needed to prevent the "lines" from blurring altogether by putting such discussion into action and perhaps informing members of Congress that this "dangerous liaison" must be subject to scrutiny and discipline once and for all.
Let's hope that we do not lend a hand to the sickening right-wing gov't if the Iranain strike becomes an issue.
Hopefully the president's popularity at home, and worldwide, will avoid us having to support the Likudists again.
If they need to strike Iran, then good luck. Iran is 70 million people and Israel is 10 million.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/opinion/L05ROTH.html?ex=1393822800&en=07992a78e4b35190&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
I'm wondering whether the Obama administration is throwing a bone to the Israeli right as a precursor to bringing serious pressure to bear on settlements and so on -- remember, Obama has shown he thinks many moves ahead. This is a relatively cheap way to foster some goodwill.
Yeah, well, if he thinks and plays too many moves ahead, he's going to lose the game before his master strategy ever makes it to the board.
There is a difference in passing information to "allies". If those allies have attacked US military ships. I see no difference in the US/Arab relations and the US/Israel relations except one rules from inside the US government for the purpose of controlling the other from the outside.
David,
What took you so long?
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